Police shootings of unarmed African American males: A systematic review

This article describes the results of a systematic review examining police shootings of unarmed African American males. Each source was evaluated by two reviewers and coded based on topic relevance and inclusion criteria. Because of the weak external validity found among the experimental studies, the authors made a substantive decision not to synthesize studies in a meta-analysis. Social work practice implications are gleaned from secondary data obtained from coroner, medical examiner, toxicology, police reports, and the experimental studies included in the systematic review. Individual, community, and police departmental policy factors were most often reported to explain such shootings when excluding sources that examined armed African American males. Implications for micro and macro–social work practice are summarized as individual, community, and police departmental policy factors.